SchrodingerZ writes: "Researchers at the University of Central Florida have created the shortest laser pulse ever recorded, lasting only 67 attoseconds. An attosecond is a mere quintillionith of a single second (1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000). The record breaking project was run by UCF Professor Zenghu Chang, using an extreme ultraviolet laser pulse. "'Dr. Chang's success in making ever-shorter light pulses helps open a new door to a previously hidden world, where we can watch electrons move in atoms and molecules, and follow chemical reactions as they take place,' said Michael Johnson, the dean of the UCF College of Sciences and a physicist." Its hoped that theses short laser blast will pave the way to better understand quantum mechanics in ways we have never before witnessed. In 2008 the previous record was set at 80-arroseconds, the pulse created at the Max Planck Institute in Garching, Germany."Link to Original Source